Page:René Marchand - Allied Agents in Soviet Russia (1918).djvu/5

 line which connects Petrograd with the Eastern districts. Subsequently there was discussion of the question of derailing trains on various lines. One agent even explained that he was assured of help from amongst the railwaymen; which was very useful, but precluded the use of certain methods of destruction, as the railwaymen won over would agree to operations directed only against trains bearing military material.

I do not labour this point, I think I have said enough to justify with concrete facts the grave fears I have outlined above. I remain deeply convinced that it is a question of the isolated activities of irresponsible agents. But it is none the less certain that such activities can only have the fatal result of convulsing Russia with a most bloody and hopeless political struggle, as well as with the inhuman tortures of a famine without precedent. I would add, in this connection, that these tortures will necessarily and almost exclusively be felt by the poor and middle classes, that is to say, by that part of the population, which is now suffering most cruelly and most unjustly in the present crisis—the lower middle classes, the employees, the workmen; because the upper and the richer middle classes have always the means left of escaping to the Ukraine and other countries (an exodus that in any case has commenced very largely already), and the popular elements in the service of the Soviet Government are assured of being relieved, at least to a certain extent, of the most intolerable privations; which, on the face of it, cannot be accomplished except more and more to the detriment of others.

I will not labour the point, but must add that during the whole of the assembly in question, not a word was said about the war against Germany.

Naturally I shall not draw arguments from this fact to sustain the hypothesis that these plans had the object of striking at Russia herself—especially at an inoffensive and toiling Russian population; it was unfortunately nevertheless a fact.

I understand perfectly that if these plans are—I do not think I have the right to say approved, but only "tolerated"—this can only be the case when it has been admitted, in the first place, that the Soviet Government has bound its interests with those of Germany. Also I am aware that this is actually what is currently said, and that certain Allied agents even live for the search—an atmosphere, I will add in parenthesis, morally dangerous and disturbing—of "documents" which will establish the "alliance."

On different occasions I have been myself led, relying on a concurrence of circumstances and appearances, to suspect com-